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Essay Prizes

Thank you for your interest in Peterhouse's Vellacott History Prize, Kelvin Science Prize and Thomas Campion English Prize. Please note that the Essay Competitions for 2015 are now closed and winners, highly commended and commended entrants have been notified of their success by letter, and unsuccessful entrants have been notified by email. The results are also posted below.

Questions for the 2016 Essay Competitions will be posted in November 2015.

For many years, Peterhouse has been proud to organise the Vellacott History essay competition and the Kelvin Science essay competition was set up in 1999 to try to duplicate its success. In 2008 we instituted the Thomas Campion English essay competition, kindly funded by the Friends of Peterhouse. All three competitions have a top prize of £500 and a second prize of £250; several further essays will be highly commended.

All three prizes have the following aims:

to give students in Year 12 or Lower Sixth who are considering applying to university an opportunity to write about a subject in which they are personally interested, developing and experiencing the independent study skills which they will need in order to do well at A level and university.

to support teachers by providing challenging extension work for talented students and by giving those students contact with Higher Education.

to encourage high-flying students to consider applying to Cambridge by giving them a taste of the type of work they would experience here.

to recognise the achievement and effort of the best of these students through prizes and commendations and to give them the opportunity of receiving feedback from leading scientists, historians and English specialists.

The standard of entries is always high and choosing winners is extremely difficult. The judges are particularly looking for originality of thought, a clear writing style, breadth of research and source materials (including books, websites and other sources) and a critical approach to those sources. They are also looking for a clear structure to the essay.

We are aware that websites that purport to offer to write or complete essays for this and other competitions exist. Entries composed in this way are fraudulent and will not be accepted. It is also worth noting that many of the websites themselves appear to be scamming operations.

Huge congratulations go to the winners of last year's competition, listed in the drop-down menus below. In addition, we would like to reiterate how high the standard of entries was and how hard it was to choose our winners. We would not wish those not mentioned below to lose interest in applying to Cambridge on the basis of this competition. If you have any questions about applying to Cambridge, please do not hesitate to get in touch with the Admissions Office; unfortunately, we are unable to give bespoke feedback on the essays submitted to this competition.

WINNER

William Maclean (St Paul's School) who attempted to defend literary difficulty in light of the quote 'The fascination of what's difficult/Has dried the sap out of my veins' (W.B. YEATS).

SECOND PRIZE

Liza Hartley (Repton School) who discussed the conflict between philosophy and passion in the writing of fiction in light of the quote 'It is such a bore that nearly all great novelists have a didactic purpose, otherwise a philosophy, directly opposite to their passional inspiration' (D.H. LAWRENCE).